Healthcare workers have the greatest likelihood of contracting a SARS-CoV-2 infection outside the workplace, not in it, suggesting that current jobsite protective measures are effective.
That’s according to an assessment of COVID-19 seroprevalence among providers, one of the largest in the United States, researchers say. Seroprevalence is a measure of antibodies to a prior infection that exist in the blood. As part of the study, four large U.S. healthcare systems shared de-identified serology test data from 24,000 volunteer worker participants. They also shared data on community and workplace coronavirus exposures at the time of the test, and ZIP code prefixes for volunteers’ residences.
Data analyses showed that community exposures to the coronavirus were tied to SARS-CoV-2 exposure. But workplace factors, including workplace role, environment or contact with patients with diagnosed COVID-19, were not, reported lead author Anthony D. Harris, M.D., of the University of Maryland School of Medicine, Baltimore.
A link existed between the incidence of COVID-19 in healthcare workers’ residential ZIP codes and seropositivity across a diverse geographic area, they found.
“The higher the cumulative incidence of COVID-19 until the week prior to the antibody test, the higher the risk of the healthcare provider being antibody positive,” Harris and colleagues wrote.
The results underscore that proper workplace protections in the healthcare setting are effective, they said.
“Together, these findings suggest that exposures outside of the workplace, rather than exposures to patients with COVID-19, may be major drivers for SARS-CoV-2 infection among healthcare workers in the United States,” the authors wrote. “These findings help correct misperceptions that healthcare providers remain at higher risk of communicable disease despite adequate PPE and infection prevention protocols,” they concluded.
The study was published in JAMA Network Open, along with an invited commentary.
